


Nameless

by martianfairy



Category: Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Canon Compliant, Feels, Gen, Loss of Identity, Post-Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, Slavery, Tatooine Slave Culture, Undercover Missions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-17 06:12:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18959488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/martianfairy/pseuds/martianfairy
Summary: It's a simple mission with about a forty percent chance of coming out alive: Go to Tatooine, infiltrate Crimson Dawn's new HQ, and retrieve intel on their human trafficking operations.If the intel is good and the stars align just right, the First Order will lose their largest supplier of stormtrooper recruits.Finn volunteers, and Rey isn't going to let him go in alone. Everything goes wrong. Qi'ra makes sure of that.Old wounds are reopened, values are put to the test, the stakes go far beyond life and death. One way or another, the Crimson Dawn will break.(Set Between TLJ and RoS)





	1. Prologue

_~~Finn~~_

Three moons. Four billion stars. One sky that stretched on for lightyears in any direction. 

Finn lifted his eyes to the darkness above Tatooine and felt his smallness in this sprawling galaxy. 

For once, just one time in his minuscule life, he vowed to do something that mattered. This mission was personal. 

“How far?” he asked, and even his whisper seemed too loud in the bare desert night.

“Almost there. . .” Rey replied, glancing down at the holo-map on her Resistance wrist-piece. 

Sand and rock stretched on as far as the eye could see, but that was all. Maybe the occasional patch of desert scrub. 

“I don’t see anything,” Finn muttered. 

He had managed to hide his anxiety for miles and miles of walking in a straight line through featureless dunes, but now it was getting to him. He was tired and fidgety all at once. 

Rey nodded, “I think maybe that’s the idea.”

She was ridiculously comfortable with the desert—serene, almost, eyes moonlit beneath her linen head wrap. He wondered if she felt the stakes like he did. How could she, really? She had been poor, mistreated, wounded, and alone, but she had always been free. 

“So how long again? Until it’s just me?” he questioned, not because he didn’t remember, but because he wanted to hear the words out in the open. 

Silence. Rocks crunching underfoot and finally a long, slow inhale. 

“I won’t leave until I'm sure they buy it, Finn. I promise.” 

Rey’s smile was too faint to be truly reassuring. Finn knew why. After she left—that would be the scary part. And he knew she had to leave, that she had to stay alive for a bigger mission. The biggest mission. Still, without her he would be all alone with. . . he didn’t want to think about it yet. 

“Never thought I’d have a bodyguard. Especially not a Jedi Knight.” 

“I don’t think I’m technically either of those things.”

“Yeah, well. Technicalities.” 

Rey came to a stop, digging her staff into the ground, and Finn pulled up beside her. A breeze sent shivers up and down his arms and swept up ghostly wisps of sand from the dune peaks. 

“There, do you see it?” she pointed into the distance. 

Finn squinted against the wind, searching for anything unusual in the barren landscape. Finally, his eyes found a cluster of domed, cylindrical buildings. They were the exact same beige color as everything else on Tatooine, and it was no wonder he had missed them before. 

“Guess it’s time to get in character, huh?” 

Rey’s brow tightened, “Are you ready?”

Finn tugged at the loose swaths of fabric covering him from head to toe and missed Poe’s jacket, missed Poe and Rose and even Chewbacca, maybe for the last time. 

He caught his breath quickening and forced it to steady, in and out.

Turning to Rey, he said, “As I’ll ever be.” 

In reply, she pulled her goggles down, covering the sliver of her face that had been showing. She took off her wrist-piece and tucked it deep into the folds of her tunic. 

Finn hid his matching Resistance tech and then brushed his fingertips across his forehead, feeling jagged claw marks he still wasn’t used to. He prayed the scar didn’t look fake. 

Wordlessly, the pair moved onward towards the strange buildings—two specks of life in an ocean of sand beneath an infinity of stars. 

***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***

_~~Rey~~_

Pain and suffering and fear radiated from the buildings like heat from Tatooine’s dual suns. The closer Rey got, the more it invaded her consciousness. She struggled to stay in the moment, not to get carried off with all the hurt. Her head throbbed with effort. 

She had known the palace was an evil place before Finn volunteered for the mission, before she insisted on helping, even before Leia warned them both that it was the vilest cess pool of crime in the galaxy. 

After all, who hadn’t heard stories? The Hutts left behind a deep gash of a legacy when they died out, and most of it was carved right there, in that palace. 

But Rey wondered if the Hutts themselves achieved _this_ level of harm, so intense and raw that it hung in the air like poison gas. She was suffocating in it, every breath was—

“. . . Jhi? You good?” Finn’s voice brought the Jedi out of her spiral.

“Yeah,” Rey responded to her cover name, haze clearing, “Just—can you feel that?”

Finn didn’t need his fake scars or the shock of white dyed into his hair or his grown out beard to appear dangerous and weathered in that moment.

“I don’t have to,” he stated. It seemed that he would lash out, that something was boiling beneath his skin, underneath his eyes. In the end, he sighed and said, “So. . . do we knock?”

It was only then that Rey realized they had reached the palace door, a giant semicircle of metal embedded into the side of a rock.

“Er- doorbell, maybe?” she teased nervously. 

If her mind slipped away like that while they were inside. . . well, the words “bantha fodder” came to mind. 

Before any other suggestions could be made, a mechanism extended from the door—a long pole with a sphere at the end of it. The sphere snapped open like an eye startled awake. Upon second glance, it _was_ an eye of sorts, some kind of old fashioned surveillance tech. 

“Who are you?” a male voice emanated from the device. It was threatening, with a guttural accent Rey had never heard before. 

“Friends of Tal Jaarkin,” Finn spoke up, “Some people doubted, but he told us dawn _is_ breaking.”

The mechanical eye blinked once and then retracted. 

Finn shot a worried look Rey’s way, but, just as he did, the ground began to tremble. 

With an earsplitting scrape, the metal door lifted, unearthing clouds of sand and dust as it went. 

Then, noise faded to silence, dust settled, and a gaping hole remained where the door had been. It looked like the maw of an exogorth. 

Without hesitation, Rey and Finn stepped into it. 

***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***


	2. Negotiations

_~~Finn~~_

“So. You’re friends of Tal Jaarkin?” Qi’ra asked, expression blank, unimpressed.

Finn nodded and dug his fingernails into his palm. 

Two guards, dressed all in black aside from a polished red helm, had been waiting at the main entryway. Once Finn explained who he and Rey were supposed to be, the sentries escorted them both to Qi’ra’s hearing room. Now, those men (or women, it was impossible to tell) stood at the door while two other guards flanked Qi’ra.

She sat across from the supposed smugglers at an oblong, glass-top desk. Her silver hair was knotted in en elegant braid atop her head, and she wore a spotless white dress with a blood red half-cape.

Finn had to admit, the Crimson Dawn knew how to put on a show. Dimly lit halls had been lined with red emblem banners, and the hearing room was sleek, gold accents and glass furniture. Qi’ra sat in a plush chair upholstered in (you guessed it) red velvet. The First Order could take branding notes from this place.

“I haven’t heard from Tal Jaarkin in three years.” The wrinkles around Qi’ra’s mouth deepened. “I thought he was dead. But you’re claiming he sent _you_ here—ah, what was your name? ”

“Chance Vorlak,” Finn said without missing a beat. His heart pounded in his ears.

Tal Jaarkin _was_ dead. The Resistance found his body on Tatooine two years ago after a firefight over a stolen bacta shipment. Finn could only hope Qi’ra didn’t know that. 

“Right. Chance. And your friend, does it speak Basic?”

“ _She_ does. Jhi Renau,” Rey replied, arms crossed. Her goggles and head wrap still enveloped her features.

Qi’ra raised an eyebrow, “I meant no offense, we get all types in here. Do you have a face, Jhi?”

“I don’t think-“ Finn started.

“I wasn’t asking you,” the older women snapped, articulating every syllable.

For a terse moment, no one moved. Then, slowly, Rey pulled up her goggles and pushed back the fabric covering her forehead and mouth.

She looked like death. Patches of skin were pink and raw while others were peeling and sickly white. It made Finn want to look away.

This had been Leia’s idea. A mask raises questions, better to have a disguise beneath the disguise. She said it was something she’d learned from personal experience.

“Blast. What happened?” Qi’ra asked, unsympathetic in her curiosity.

“Accident smuggling a haul of Rhydonium. We delivered the payload.” The Jedi shrugged, but held fierce eye contact with Qi’ra.

“You’re dedicated, I’ll give you that. So, let’s get to it, shall we? How do you know Tal Jaarkin?”

“We worked a few jobs for him,” Finn supplied, “I helped organize the routes, Jhi piloted. We made a good team. Tal’s getting older though. . . he wants out of the game.”

“Which puts you and Jhi out of a job,” Qi’ra finished.

“Exactly. Tal seemed to think we could find one here.”

The woman tapped her fingers against her forearm and pursed her lips, calculating.

“Tal was a good smuggler for me. He took the tough gigs and paid his debts. His recommendation counts for something, which is why I’m going to be honest with you. The Crimson Dawn has undergone significant changes since Tal worked with us.”

“What kind of changes?” Rey scowled.

“Times have been hard, all this turmoil in the galaxy. Luxury goods don’t turn a profit like they used to, and, between the Resistance and the First Order, most mined resources are locked down—regulated on site. We’ve been forced to rely heavily on a different kind of resource. We aren’t looking to hire any new smugglers.”

“Sorry for wasting your time,” Finn said, beginning to stand up.

“I wasn’t finished yet,” Qi’ra went on cooly, “What we’re really looking for at this time are reliable slavers.” 

Finn and Rey shared a sideways glance. About time she came out with it. 

“That’s not something I can sign up for right now,” Rey said, firm, as if her mind was made up.

Qi’ra tilted her head as if to say _“your loss.”_ Next she turned her gaze to Finn.

He drew his mouth into a straight line. This conversation made him sick to the stomach, but he willed himself to stay composed, collected.

“I’m listening.”

***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***

_~~Rey~~_

If there was one thing Rey hated, it was waiting. She figured she had waited her whole life up until recently, and that was more than anyone’s fair share.

She was especially not thrilled to find herself waiting for Finn in the cantina of Crimson Dawn’s compound. It wasn’t a bad cantina, all things considered. It was clean and stylish and lit warmly.

If she squinted, Rey could pick out a few things pointing back to the Hutt era: the floor, ornate metal in some places and dirt in others; the walls of simple brick and plaster. Still, the cantina itself was nice enough.

What got to Rey were the screams in her head. True suffering was happening in this place. It wasn’t something she could block out.

Then there were the scumbags sitting at the bar with her. In the pauses between their conversations about life and politics and the trials of working in the slaving industry, their eyes would rest on Rey. She knew she was a spectacle, sitting there in full desert attire, goggles down, sullen and silent. She hated it.

Needless to say, she was relieved when she spotted Finn beneath one of the arched entryways, scanning the room for her.  She leaned back on her barstool and lifted a hand in the air. Finn’s eyes caught on her and he made his way over. 

“So, what ‘details’ did I have to leave the room for you two to discuss?” Rey said in a low voice while Finn pulled himself, one leg at a time, into a seat on her right. He might have looked like a scoundrel, but he didn’t quite have the mannerisms down.

“Salary, contract time limit, and. . .”

“What?”

“She doesn’t want me to start doing strategic planning right away.” Finn shifted, rocking his stool a half inch off the ground. His eyes were too wide, sweat beaded around his hairline. “Pretty sure she expects me to earn her trust. I’m supposed to help with the ‘unnaming’ procedure for the first few weeks.”

“ _Unnaming_?”

“Keep it down,” Finn breathed, dipping his head towards a battered old quarren only a few seats away, “You’re not supposed to know that. Anyways, I’m not sure how they do it, but the name kind of speaks of itself.”

_FN-2187_ , the registration number rang in Rey’s head. Her friend had been unnamed once.

“You don’t have to do this,” she said, but it came out like more of an imperative than an option,“We’ll find someone else.”

Finn wasn’t a good liar. Keeping up the act long enough to gain access to the slaving routes and processing centers had always been a stretch, but now? With _weeks_ tacked on, not to mention the emotional toll it would take. . .

“Re—Jhi, I want to do this. I’m _going_ to do this.”

“Absolutely not. I won’t leave until you come with me.”

“I’m done running.”

“And I need you _alive_. . .Please, y-your the first friend I ever had.”

Rey was glad her face was covered because tears were beginning to slip from her eyes.

“You don’t need me. Never did,” Finn whispered, smiling soft and sad, “You have a destiny out there—a damn important one. This is my destiny.”

Rey closed her eyes, swallowed, heaved a shaky sigh.

“You’re not the same man I met drinking from a Happabore trough.”

Finn shook his head, almost laughing, “I think you mean _chased away_ from a Happabore trough.”

Rey placed a hand on his arm, lifting her goggles to make a promise with her eyes.

“I’ll stay here until morning,” she said, really believing that to be true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for reading! I hope you're enjoying it as much as I am. Let me know what you think in the comments!


	3. What it Means to Stay

 

_~~Finn~~_

It was dark in his quarters when he arrived. The room was small, just a bunk and a desk and a locker, but it was clean and modern. Sand plaster walls stood in strange contrast to all white furnishings and polished metal accents.

Finn found the button to turn on the lights, then collapsed on his little bed. It was good to be alone. Hot, angry tears stung his eyes and he let them escape. Q’ira was despicable—the way she talked about slaving, like it was a business, like it wasn’t built on broken lives and broken families.

Monsters existed in the galaxy, and most of them were sentient.

Finn wiped away his tears with one sleeve and sat up, leaned his back against the wall, watched his chest rise and fall. Time to get to work.

First, he stood and checked the room for surveillance devices, just in case. It didn’t take long, the space was so compact and bare. He lifted the mattress, ran his hand down the back panel of the locker, scanned every inch of the ceiling and walls. Nothing. Q’ira must not have expected trouble from those in on her dealings. 

Satisfied that he wasn’t being watched, Finn pulled out his Resistance communicator. He typed out a mission report, explained that things were going well aside from one slight setback. . .

Finn also used the communicator’s schematic function to start mapping out the compound. He did his best to make the holomap accurate, squeezing his eyes shut to envision how the cantina adjoined to the entrance, which hall connected Q’ira’s hearing room to the main stairwell and on what floor.

This would be crucial later, when he had extracted the intel and flown lightyears away, back to Resistance soil. Resistance troops would storm the palace, free the slaves, take Q’ira to pay for her crimes. They would know how to get in, where to go first. Q’ira would erase her databases, but it would be too late; Finn would have stolen everything the Resistance needed.

All of Crimson Dawn’s slave trade routes, all their trafficking bases, all their touchpoints with the First Order—they would all be in the hands of the Resistance. Soon, they would all be taken down. Maybe Finn would go with them to do it, if he made it that far.

Finn played this out in his mind over and over again. He thought about it as he turned his communicator off and slipped the thin metal disc beneath his mattress. He thought about it as his head rested on his pillow. He thought about it for hours in the dark, eyes wide open, until sleep finally won out.

The next day would be harder.

***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***—***

_~~Rey~~_

Finn had been gone for three hours, approximately. Rey decided she would sit in the cantina for three hours longer. Finn was probably sound asleep by that point, but she wanted to be certain.

What if he sent a distress signal _after_ she left the compound? What could she say? “I forgot the keys to my speeder?”

So, in three hours she would go. Even that didn’t seem long enough. She tried to recall Finn’s words about destiny. She tried to convince herself he would be fine. Nothing worked. Until he returned safely to the Resistance, Rey would worry about Finn. She wondered if he worried about her too.

Enough of that.

Rey took a sip of her tonic water and wished that it was something stronger. Maybe she and Poe and Rose would go out for drinks after this, worry about Finn together, but now was not the time to let alcohol or worry cloud her mind. Even the sobs that echoed across the space of her consciousness must be pushed to the background.

She leaned over the bar, rested her chin in her hands, and blinked to keep her heavy eyelids from shutting. The music in this place reminded her of Jakku, like so many other things. It ebbed and flowed gauzily, a sheer dress flapping in the wind. Rey listened to it until, in the middle of a verse, it came to a stop.

She sat up straight, gauging the room. Beneath one of the arches, a line of black and red filed in. A flash of white behind the wall of guards confirmed that Q’ira had arrived.

Why would she make an appearance at this ungodly hour?

No one in the cantina seemed to notice that the waking hours had passed, though—it was fuller and rowdier than when Rey had arrived. Q’ira must have been waiting for an audience.

The Jedi watched as the white-headed woman climbed atop a polished dais on the far side of the room and lowered herself into an extravagant glass and gold chair. A throne.

Her entrance riled the crowd, arousing cheers and applause. Q’ira smiled but made no response, holding herself above the affection she inspired. The music resumed, the crowd settled back down, things were almost as before.

Not quite, though. There was expectancy, tension strung in the atmosphere. Rey could have felt it even without the Force to guide her, but she didn’t understand why it was there.

She hunched over the bar again, keeping her profile as low as possible. Just then, something tapped her between the shoulder-blades.

Rey turned her head to the side and shot her eyes behind her. It was one of Q’ira’s men. The bar’s hanging lamps gleamed in his red helm.

“Q’ira requests your presence,” the guard said, all pomp and circumstance.

_“I’m right here,”_ Rey wanted to reply. Instead, she dipped her head, took her staff in one hand, and followed the guard towards Q’ira’s throne.

“You can sit down if you like,” said the crime lord (lady?), once in earshot. She motioned to a smaller chair on her right.

Rey did not like, but she sat in the chair all the same. By her count, there were eight guards in the room, four flanking the dais and four guarding exit points. Running wasn’t an option.

She could take all of them, but her lightsaber was hidden in her staff, not easily accessible. Besides, Q’ira couldn’t know she was a Jedi, couldn’t even know she was force sensitive. If her cover was blown, Finn’s was too.

So, she stayed seated.

Neither woman spoke for a full minute, too long.

Q’ira was the first to break the silence, “Why are you still here, Jhi?”

Rey’s stomach dropped to her knees. She swallowed hard, shrugged.

“Have you reconsidered my offer?”

“I just needed a drink. To rest for the journey,” Rey formed her words one syllable at a time.

Q’ira let out a sigh. “I have to say, you got my hopes up. Is there any way I could convince you to stay? We’re terribly short on good pilots around here.”

“My mind is made up,” Rey said, able to breathe again. Q’ira was after a pilot and not onto her.

“Mmm. You know, you wouldn’t have to captain slave ships forever. I’m hoping to expand, once our contingency funds are built back up. You could be the first pilot on our new smuggling force. I’d give you an excellent cut.”

“You can call me when that new smuggling force is operational.”

“Have it your way,” Q’ira scowled, folded her hands in her lap.

Rey was about to say her goodbyes and leave, but, before she could even stand up, the guards pounded their boots once, twice, three times against the floor. Their unison was more precise than stormtroopers. At the sound, every thug and criminal in the cantina roared in delight.

Q’ira’s expression shifted from sourness to smug amusement, “Look at the time.”

“What’s going on?” Rey had to shout above the clamor. 

“It’s three o’clock—time for a pit fight. I hope you’ll watch with me.” This was a request only in form.

Rey crossed her arms and furrowed her brow beneath her goggles but remained where she was.

“Very good,” Q’ira said, lifting a finger into the air.

Without warning, the ground beneath Rey began to move. She clawed at the arms of her chair, anchoring herself. Once panic wore off, she realized two guards were rolling the dais backwards.

Beneath where she and Q’ira once sat was a rectangle of metal flooring. There were holes cut out of the metal intricately, like lace. Through those holes, Rey could make out dust and rocks and bones, full carcasses, all ten feet below. It was an arena.

The pit.

Already a mob had formed around it, jostling for a better view. This might have devolved into an all out brawl, but the hiss of a hatch door opening lulled the crowd.

Down in the pit, a selonian stepped forward and dashed, faster than the eye could track, around the rink. He was working the crowd. . . and it was working. They cheered him on, “Valnan, Valnan.” He was a fan favorite.

Opposite Valnan, a nautolan stumbled onto the floor. He was large, formidable looking, with one or two of his fourteen tails missing and a long spear in one hand. Still, he used the other hand to shield his eyes from the white lights beating down. The crowd jeered at him. He was new to this.

Without ceremony, they began to fight. Valnan was aggressive, invading the nautolin’s space, making his long spear useless. His selonian claws slashed at his opponent, swifter than any human and leaving bloody trails in their wake.

“How long does this go on?” Rey asked, tearing her eyes from the scene.

“Until one of them gives out—or dies. Really it’s whatever the victor prefers. The bets get settled either way. Can you believe the Hutts wasted this pit on executions? Terrible economics, no wonder they died out.”

Q’ira suddenly snapped her gaze away from the pit and onto Rey. “What do you think?”

Rey was at a loss for words. Bile rose in her throat.

“Never mind, I forgot you don’t believe in small talk. Would you like to give the pit a go?”

“Wha-?”

Rey’s staff was snatched from her hands by one guard. Another yanked her from her seat, twisted her arms behind her back, and put binders on her wrists.

Q’ira’s smile stretched like a red wound across her face. “See you soon.”

“Wait,” Rey protested, head whirring to come up with an escape, “I’ll work for you. I’ll pilot a slave ship.” 

“To be honest, I don’t think I can trust you, Jhi—not as things stand, anyway.”

Rey gritted her teeth. There were a thousand things she wanted to do in that moment. . . but she wouldn’t. Not for Finn’s sake. There had to be another way out.

“I’ll need my staff. In the pit,” she said. If she could just get her lightsaber back-

“And you’ll get it. In the pit,” Q’ira’s blue eyes seemed to pierce right through Rey’s goggles in that moment. She motioned a limp, lazy hand at her men. “Take her.”

With more than one unnecessary shove, the guards hauled Rey from the cantina and she allowed it. Hardly anyone noticed. The pit fight was far more entertaining.

Rey knew she should have left the palace far sooner, while she still had the chance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for sticking with me! This was a very Rey heavy chapter, but Finn definitely has more material in the chapters to come! Happy reading and, as always, let me know what you think!

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! This piece formed in my brain while I was driving one day, and I rather liked it. As the description says, it's set between "The Last Jedi" and "Rise of Skywalker." I did my best to keep it canon compliant, but it does stretch a bit here and there. 
> 
> I haven’t written a fic in a long time, but I decided to tap this one out as practice for some original work. Plus, the new trailer for The Rise of Skywalker got me all excited! Hope you enjoy it, and feedback is always appreciated!


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